Duplicatable Process

For a leader, the maxim is true: it’s not about what you can do, but what you can duplicate. At some point your vision must transcend your skills and be deposited into the basic reproducible habits of the entire congregation.

There are three processes to start thinking about about: (1) How do people move through your strategy? (2) How do your people do the work of evangelism? (3) How does your church body multiply itself?

As the leader you want to lubricate the gears of this process. This means motivating people to do whatever it takes to help others move through your strategy. It’s like building a customer service impulse into every heart and hand that calls your church home. Churches talk all the time about assimilation as an important function. Don’t miss the opportunity to leverage your vision generally, and your strategy specifically, to make assimilation a function of culture through micro steps that everyone can take.

Second, give your people reproducible steps, skills, tools, and processes for them to become evangelists.

Keep in mind that we are not talking about formulaic approaches. What we are talking about is more in line with the eloquent plea of authors Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch in The Shaping of Things to Come: “We yearn for something richer and more complex, more dangerous. The one-size-fits-all to church mission and evangelism must be abandoned. Fewer and fewer churches seem to be developing evangelistic ministries specifically contextualized to the geographic area or subculture in which they are living.” These words are apt, remind us that knowing our local predicament is essential in creatively, yet thoughtfully, engaging our culture.

Third, you must decide how you duplicate.

One of the values of the missional church is healthy orientation toward kingdom growth over the necessary growth of one local church. On the basis of your Kingdom Concept and your Vision Frame, you must decide what size is best, what timing is best, and what kind of multiplication is best.

There are many questions to ask about the duplication process, making it critically important that the process be tied to the vision.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Will Mancini

Will Mancini wants you and your ministry to experience the benefits of stunning, God-given clarity. As a pastor turned vision coach, Will has worked with an unprecedented variety of churches from growing megachurches and missional communities, to mainline revitalization and church plants. He is the founder of Auxano, creator of VisionRoom.com and the author of Church Unique: How Missional Leaders Cast Vision and Create Movement.

Its important to measure leading indicators and not lagging indicators. People and contributions, for example, may not be a good leading indicators; they tell only what happened and not a prediction of what will happen. Consider the drivers that cause people to come, or be generious in their giving. You improve what you measure and if what you measure is impactful regarding the future you have the right metric. Don't measuring what was, measure and improve those things which will affect the future.

I was on a committee that closed churches. It killed me that we could close a church one week and the next week it would open with a different name and different denomination and cars would be parked up and down the street. Why? Why? Why?

Recently I visited a Church and I was #1 put off by the timing of the meet and greet. 10 minutes after the Pastor had begun speaking he stopped for the m & g, which totally throwed the focus off from the sermon. Which made me think "wow" could that not have been done at the beginning or end. And #2 at no time during the sermon was a biblical passage given to back up what the Pastor referred to in his comments. I didn't go back as I didn't feel God's presence guiding that church.